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Roman Catechism
Various Forms Of Theft
They are guilty of theft who buy stolen goods, or retain the property of others, whether found, seized, or pilfered. If you have found, and not restored, says St. Augustine, you have stolen. If the true owner cannot, however, be discovered, whatever is found should go to the poor. If the finder refuse to make restitution, he gives evident proof that, were it in his power, he would make no scruple of stealing all that he could lay his hands on.
Those who, in buying or selling, have recourse to fraud and lying, involve themselves in the same guilt. The Lord will avenge their trickery. Those who sell bad and adulterated goods as real and genuine, or who defraud the purchasers by weight, measure, number, or rule, are guilty of a species of theft still more criminal and unjust. It is written in Deuteronomy: Thou shalt not have divers weights in thy bag. Do not any unjust thing, says Leviticus, in judgment, in rule, in weight or in measure. Let the balance be just, and the weights equal, the bushel just, and the sextary equal. And elsewhere it is written: Divers weights are an abomination before the Lord; a deceitful balance is not good.
It is, also, a downright theft, when labourers and artisans exact full wages from those to whom they have not given just and due labor. Again, dishonest servants and agents are no better than thieves, nay they are more detestable than other thieves; against these everything may be locked, while against a pilfering servant nothing in a house can be secure by bolt or lock.
They, also, who obtain money under pretence of poverty, or by deceitful words, may be said to steal, and their guilt is aggravated since they add falsehood to theft.
Persons charged with offices of public or private trust, who altogether neglect, or but indifferently perform their duties, while they enjoy the salary and emoluments of such offices, are also to be reckoned in the number of thieves.
To enumerate the various other modes of theft, invented by the ingenuity of avarice, which is versed in all the arts of making money, would be a tedious and, as already said, a most difficult task.